Generating the partitions of a number
Solution 1
It's called Partitions. [Also see Wikipedia: Partition (number theory).]
The number of partitions p(n) grows exponentially, so anything you do to generate all partitions will necessarily have to take exponential time.
That said, you can do better than what your code does. See this, or its updated version in Python Algorithms and Data Structures by David Eppstein.
Solution 2
Here's my solution (exponential time) in Python:
q = { 1: [[1]] }
def decompose(n):
try:
return q[n]
except:
pass
result = [[n]]
for i in range(1, n):
a = n-i
R = decompose(i)
for r in R:
if r[0] <= a:
result.append([a] + r)
q[n] = result
return result
>>> decompose(5)
[[5], [4, 1], [3, 2], [3, 1, 1], [2, 2, 1], [2, 1, 1, 1], [1, 1, 1, 1, 1]]
Solution 3
When you ask to more efficient algorithm, I don't know which to compare. But here is one algorithm written in straight forward way (Erlang):
-module(partitions).
-export([partitions/1]).
partitions(N) -> partitions(N, N).
partitions(N, Max) when N > 0 ->
[[X | P]
|| X <- lists:seq(min(N, Max), 1, -1),
P <- partitions(N - X, X)];
partitions(0, _) -> [[]];
partitions(_, _) -> [].
It is exponential in time (same as Can Berk Güder's solution in Python) and linear in stack space. But using same trick, memoization, you can achieve big improvement by save some memory and less exponent. (It's ten times faster for N=50)
mp(N) ->
lists:foreach(fun (X) -> put(X, undefined) end,
lists:seq(1, N)), % clean up process dictionary for sure
mp(N, N).
mp(N, Max) when N > 0 ->
case get(N) of
undefined -> R = mp(N, 1, Max, []), put(N, R), R;
[[Max | _] | _] = L -> L;
[[X | _] | _] = L ->
R = mp(N, X + 1, Max, L), put(N, R), R
end;
mp(0, _) -> [[]];
mp(_, _) -> [].
mp(_, X, Max, R) when X > Max -> R;
mp(N, X, Max, R) ->
mp(N, X + 1, Max, prepend(X, mp(N - X, X), R)).
prepend(_, [], R) -> R;
prepend(X, [H | T], R) -> prepend(X, T, [[X | H] | R]).
Anyway you should benchmark for your language and purposes.
Solution 4
Here's a much more long-winded way of doing it (this is what I did before I knew the term "partition", which enabled me to do a google search):
def magic_chunker (remainder, chunkSet, prevChunkSet, chunkSets):
if remainder > 0:
if prevChunkSet and (len(prevChunkSet) > len(chunkSet)): # counting down from previous
# make a chunk that is one less than relevant one in the prevChunkSet
position = len(chunkSet)
chunk = prevChunkSet[position] - 1
prevChunkSet = [] # clear prevChunkSet, no longer need to reference it
else: # begins a new countdown;
if chunkSet and (remainder > chunkSet[-1]): # no need to do iterations any greater than last chunk in this set
chunk = chunkSet[-1]
else: # i.e. remainder is less than or equal to last chunk in this set
chunk = remainder #else use the whole remainder for this chunk
chunkSet.append(chunk)
remainder -= chunk
magic_chunker(remainder, chunkSet, prevChunkSet, chunkSets)
else: #i.e. remainder==0
chunkSets.append(list(chunkSet)) #save completed partition
prevChunkSet = list(chunkSet)
if chunkSet[-1] > 1: # if the finalchunk was > 1, do further recursion
remainder = chunkSet.pop() #remove last member, and use it as remainder
magic_chunker(remainder, chunkSet, prevChunkSet, chunkSets)
else: # last chunk is 1
if chunkSet[0]==1: #the partition started with 1, we know we're finished
return chunkSets
else: #i.e. still more chunking to go
# clear back to last chunk greater than 1
while chunkSet[-1]==1:
remainder += chunkSet.pop()
remainder += chunkSet.pop()
magic_chunker(remainder, chunkSet, prevChunkSet, chunkSets)
partitions = []
magic_chunker(10, [], [], partitions)
print partitions
>> [[10], [9, 1], [8, 2], [8, 1, 1], [7, 3], [7, 2, 1], [7, 1, 1, 1], [6, 4], [6, 3, 1], [6, 2, 2], [6, 2, 1, 1], [6, 1, 1, 1, 1], [5, 5], [5, 4, 1], [5, 3, 2], [5, 3, 1, 1], [5, 2, 2, 1], [5, 2, 1, 1, 1], [5, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1], [4, 4, 2], [4, 4, 1, 1], [4, 3, 3], [4, 3, 2, 1], [4, 3, 1, 1, 1], [4, 2, 2, 2], [4, 2, 2, 1, 1], [4, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1], [4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1], [3, 3, 3, 1], [3, 3, 2, 2], [3, 3, 2, 1, 1], [3, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1], [3, 2, 2, 2, 1], [3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1], [3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1], [3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1], [2, 2, 2, 2, 2], [2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1], [2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1], [2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1], [2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1], [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1]]
Can Berk Güder
iOS developer. M.Sc., Computer Science and EngineeringSabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey Favorite languages: C, Objective-C, Python, Ruby You can follow me on Twitter and GitHub. Talk is cheap. Show me the code. — Linus Torvalds
Updated on July 28, 2022Comments
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Can Berk Güder almost 2 years
I needed an algorithm to generate all possible partitions of a positive number, and I came up with one (posted as an answer), but it's exponential time.
The algorithm should return all the possible ways a number can be expressed as the sum of positive numbers less than or equal to itself. So for example for the number 5, the result would be:
- 5
- 4+1
- 3+2
- 3+1+1
- 2+2+1
- 2+1+1+1
- 1+1+1+1+1
So my question is: is there a more efficient algorithm for this?
EDIT: Question was titled "Sum decomposition of a number", since I didn't really know what this was called. ShreevatsaR pointed out that they were called "partitions," so I edited the question title accordingly.
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Can Berk Güder over 15 yearsOh, thanks. Wish I knew what it was called before. =) It's funny they don't teach this in Number Theory.
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sidgeon smythe over 6 yearsNo need to be so self-deprecating! Have you tested that this works? How do you call this function? Is there an example?
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johnbasil over 6 yearsthanks @ShreevatsaR, yes it does work and I've now made it into a full example
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Arash Kazemi over 5 yearsPlease explain your answer.
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Jay over 5 yearsYou can't get any better than exponential, since there is an exponential number of partitions!
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sidgeon smythe almost 5 yearsHe moved his blog; the last link is now here.
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Evgeni Nabokov over 4 yearslastPartition.length is n, right? All partition arrays have the same size.
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Evgeni Nabokov over 4 yearsIt seems to me that your logic is wrong. For n=6 it does not have [2,2,2], [3,3].